The broadcaster is understood to be hard-bargaining over what it should pay to televise the Games, raising the prospect that organisers may fail to secure coverage of the event on a free-to-air channel.
Yesterday the First Minister criticised the stance of the national broadcaster, claiming it had not yet “stepped up to the plate” while Lord Smith of Kelvin, chairman of the 2014 organising committee and a former BBC governor, said the BBC had not offered what it paid for the rights to show the Manchester 2002 Games.
The comments came as it was confirmed the cost of staging the Glasgow extravaganza has risen by £81 million to £454 million, a move revealed by The Herald last week.
Mr Salmond said: “For the Manchester Games in 2002, the income from domestic broadcasting rights from the BBC more than offset the cost of broadcasting those Games.
“Our plans were based on the BBC offering a similar detail for Scotland in 2014. However, the BBC have not yet stepped up to the plate and offered to match the Manchester figure, and Scotland is left looking at a potentially significant shortfall.”
Sir Robert said: “Previous Games have been able to offset the host broadcast costs against the sale proceeds for the domestic rights. At this stage the organising committee has been unable to engage the BBC on this basis and with the current categorisation of the Commonwealth Games as a B-list event, is unlikely to be able to secure another domestic broadcaster.”
But the BBC, which is facing its own funding pressures, apparently warned organisers as far back as 2006 never to automatically expect that it would be broadcaster, saying that the bid team had promised “the most ambitious broadcasting package in the history of the event” without fully costing them.
A BBC source said: “Either the organisers have forgotten discussions over the past three years or have chosen to ignore them. We have been talking with them in an adult fashion but have been trying to get across that it’s a very different economic world than it was 2006 and will be very different again in 2014.”
A spokesman said: “We have been having constructive talks with the Games organisers .. and these talks are ongoing.”
Yesterday’s cash injection covers the eventuality of the organisers paying all the costs of broadcasting and then receiving less for the sale of the rights.
The bulk of the extra cash will come from the Scottish Government, with the city council providing an additional £9m. An extra 100 staff needed to host the Games, additional pension requirements and an increase in contingency funding have all added to the costs.
But the largest single factor contributing to the budget increase has been the refusal of the BBC to commit to signing up to becoming host broadcaster, creating a potential multimillion-pound deficit.
In Manchester the BBC had an outlay of £20m to show the Games and then paid an additional £2m for the rights to show them.
The criticism comes just days after it emerged the 2014 Games may not be shown on free-to-air television after a UK Government-commissioned inquiry, the Davies Report, recommended it should be removed from broadcasting’s “crown jewels”, with organisers claiming they “cannot rule out” a situation where there is no coverage of the event on terrestrial TV.
The Government’s B-list of “Crown Jewels” sporting events requires highlights to be shown on free-to-air terrestrial TV.
It also comes just days before the publication of Audit Scotland’s report “Commonwealth Games 2014 – Progress Report On Planning For The Delivery of the XXth Games”.
The organisers have
refused to reveal negotiating details on exactly what the broadcaster was offering for the Glasgow Games but said it was less
than offered for Manchester, coinciding with a significant rise in costs for televising sport due to technological advances such high-definition television and fewer broadcasters having the finances to bid for the Games.
The First Minister also quoted from the BBC’s contribution to the Davies Report, where the broadcaster described it as second only
to the Olympics and one of the world’s great sporting events, adding: “I’m hoping that as a publicly-funded event and the fact they are publicly funded they will recognise the importance of this event and not take advantage of the position that we’re not able to go to competing broadcasters.”
He later said he would have hoped the broadcasting deal would have been tied-up by now, adding that he would “happily shake hands” on a deal similar to Manchester’s.
l Flower of Scotland and Scotland The Brave are the last songs standing in the battle to become Scotland’s official national anthem for the 2010 Commonwealth Games.
Highland Cathedral and Loch Lomond were eliminated from the contest by a vote by Scottish athletes at the Commonwealth Games Scotland awards dinner on Saturday evening.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article